Nanotech versus cancer

In April 2000, I was invited along with other journalists to a press conference at a hotel in downtown Washington, DC. The National Cancer Institute and NASA wanted to publicize their new agreement to fund research into keeping astronauts alive and healthy on long space voyages.

Back then, Dan Goldin was NASA’s administrator and Richard Klausner was NCI director. Both luminaries were at the press conference. I don’t remember much about what Goldin and Klausner said, but one thing did stick in my mind: the idea that astronauts could be injected with nanotech health sensors.

Although the idea sounded far-fetched at the time—and still does—I’m reluctant to deny the ingenuity of future scientists and engineers. Medical nanobots could become a reality. But what about today?

I spent last Friday at the annual symposium hosted by the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for NanoBio Technology . This year’s topic was cancer nanotechnology .

Perhaps because I recalled that NASA–NCI press conference, I expected the symposium to bring me up to date on cancer-fighting nanobots. What I discovered instead was more interesting and subtle. As explained by keynote speaker, Johns Hopkins’ Stephen Baylin, nanotech has at least five roles in fighting cancer:

1. Detecting tumors
2. Capturing circulating tumor cells
3. Delivering drugs
4. Imaging tumors
5. Elucidating cancer biology

In his talk, Gregory Longmore of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, outlined some of the complex signaling pathways responsible for metastasis. Somehow, cancer cells break off from a primary tumor, break through the layer of cells that separates them from the bloodstream, and then spread to new sites.

Of the facts and figures Longmore cited, two struck me especially. Ninety percent of cancer patients are killed by metastases, not primary tumors. Ninety-nine percent of cancer cells that make their way into the bloodstream die. “Metastasis is incredibly inefficient,” he said.

Longmore’s talk barely mentioned nanotech, but it was present implicitly as a tool for understanding and possibly thwarting metastasis. The video clip from INBT shows the preparation of a nanotech device for studying a key step in metastasis, cell detachment, in a controlled way.

I’m not sure whether we’ll treat or prevent cancer by swallowing beakers of nanobots, but the symposium at Johns Hopkins left me with the impression that nanotech will help us find a cure for it.